Do negative wealth shocks impact your health?

The answer is ‘yes’ according to a paper by French (2023):. The authors use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) as well as high-frequency returns data for the S&P 500. The study finds that: …a one standard deviation increase in cumulative [negative wealth] shocks over two years increases the probability of elevated blood…

FDA Hedges

Pharmaceutical companies face major risk.  There is risk that the drugs they are researching don’t work (e.g., lack of efficacy) or are not safe.  There is risk that health insurers or government payers will not cover their treatment.  And there is risk that the FDA will not approve a drug after a Phase III clinical trial.…

Why aren’t there more cures?

The answer is money, reimbursement, and incentives.  Treating chronic disease gives innovators payoff over a long period of time.  If innovators created a cure for that disease, they could of course charge the net present value of this same stream of payments.  Health plans, patients and the media, however, are often shocked at the high sticker…

Are nursing home expenses driving savings?

From a working paper by Karen A. Kopecky and Tatyana Koreshkova. …even though they are only a third of OOP [out-of-pocket] health expenses, the presence of nursing home expenses accounts for more than half of savings for all health expenses…We find that 27 percent of savings for old-age OOP health expenses, 3.7 percent of private wealth, is…

Will you have enough money for retirement?

For many individuals, the answer is increasingly ‘no’.   Yahoo and the Wall Street Journal report that: Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers surveyed reported less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments excluding their homes, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Only 49% reported having so…